Kiteworld Magazine | The original international kitesurfing magazine

Liam Whaley puts it all on the line in the search for kiteboarding perfection

In Issue #84 we caught up with Liam Whaley as he assembled a team and headed off to Greece to discover unknown spots for his upcoming video series – Seeking Cloud Nine

Liam flies by feel, so took a gamble, reached into his own pocket, hired the best video-photo team for two weeks and headed off to shred new and unknown spots in Greece. Seeking Cloud Nine will be a series of eight to 12 minute videos, the first of which is dropping next Monday! One of the shots from their trip, shot by photographer Ydwer van der Heide, made the cover of Issue #84 and KW editor Jim Gaunt caught up with the 20-year-old Tarifa resident to find out more about the beginning of his search. Here are some extracted highlights from their interview.

“I was willing to invest my own money just to make it happen. It’s a gamble but I knew if I went about it another way they might have said no as their budgets were tied up and I’d have lost my motivation. I want people to see who I am and what my riding is all about now, so I wanted a video edited in my kind of style, not by someone selling my image. I want to sell the image that I want people to see of me.”

You can’t just ride twice a week when you’re a competition rider, though. You have to ride at least four times a week to stay consistent, especially with the new WKL format as you literally can’t miss any tricks if you want to win your heat. There’s way less margin for error now, so you have to be consistent and just try to keep your body in form.

I still want to have fun with my life, so I try to plan my days because I like to go out, party and do other things, but when I see there are good conditions coming I try to stay super healthy, sleep early a few nights before and just be ready.

After winning the tour in 2015 and feeling a bit bitter about there being no podium or any celebration, I told myself I’m going to try to do well in competitions this year, but I’m not going to shoot myself in the head if I don’t win because I won’t get that much out of it anyway. So I’ve focused on working with the guys who are trying to build things and make the tour really amazing. Unlike this year I’m going to start the season fresh with a really healthy and fit body and really go for it.